


We will live tomorrow

by Hecate



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're the only thing I still have left." Goes AU after Stefan takes the coffins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We will live tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Don't archive/translate without asking. Not mine, no money made. Based on fictional characters.

It's Katherine who saves her.

*

The men she loves die for her. There's nothing romantic about it.

*

There was a monster under her bed, a monster in the hallway. Shadows moving so very fast, like dreams gone crazy, and she couldn't run fast enough, wasn't strong enough. She is only human, always breakable, always the fragile flower blooming towards death, and Stefan steps in front of her, and he dies silently.

Damon screams as they kill him.

*

When she wakes, the shadows are still fighting. But they're slowing, they're losing, because there's somebody else in the room, somebody faster and meaner.

Elena is covered in ashes.

She closes her eyes, swallows, feels it on her lips, her face, and thinks of Stefan's touches and the way Damon kissed her. The debris they left behind are bitter in her mouth, like tears and blood and decades gone by. She swallows.

Above her, she hears her own voice, sharper and older, and she opens her eyes to see Katherine glaring down at her. "Move," she says, and Elena shrugs.

"Can't."

"Move, damnit," Katherine repeats, and Elena realizes that Katherine is pushing at the chaos of broken things that are pressing Elena down. Furniture in pieces, the plaster of a wall, and it's all heavy on her body, too heavy to move. But Katherine isn't human like her, is so different, and she pushes until Elena is free, pushes until she can pull Elena up and after her.

They run.

The shadows want to follow but can't, a growling beast in their way, and Elena hates Klaus for playing the hero. He has no right to that, it's the Salvatores’ place, and now that they are gone, the age of heroes is over.

When Katherine pulls her out the door and away from what used to be her home, she doesn't look back. She just stumbles after Katherine, fights to stay on her feet, and she thinks, Stefan, Stefan, Stefan, until Katherine pushes her into the passenger seat of her own car. Then she stops, breathes against the thumping of her heartbeat, closes her eyes when Katherine throws herself into the driver’s seat and starts the car.

"They're dead," she says into the silence minutes later. Katherine turns the radio on. The night swallows the both of them.

*

Klaus finds them in Boston.

Katherine lets him in. Elena doesn't even look up.

*

Elena sleeps through her days now, curled on motel beds, leaning against the car window.

She sleeps and sleeps, dreaming away from the real world, and when she wakes, she doesn't think of the dead for a few moments.

Then, she remembers. She always does.

*

She calls Jeremy, tells him about Stefan and Damon. "Be safe," she says.

He laughs.

"I don't think I can," he answers. She disconnects the line. Breathes until the distance between her and Jeremy is bearable, is just a fact like Stefan being dead, like Damon and Jenna and her parents, gone, gone, gone.

"Do you think you'll ever find them? Your family" she asks Klaus not much later. He shrugs and doesn't answer. For the first time, she wishes she could help him. But the feeling fades away.

*

Katherine takes her dancing sometimes, drags her into dark clubs with the threat of stealing her vervain and compelling her to come if Elena refuses.

So Elena dances with her. 

Men and women watch them, offer them drinks. Elena refuses, Katherine smiles and goes with them. When she returns, her lips are always redder and her smile sharper. Elena pretends not to notice and follows when Katherine pulls her back onto the dance floor.

The beat of the music sounds just like her heart.

*

Sometimes, Klaus is staring at her when she looks up, his eyes focused, and a shudder runs down her spine. She looked away the first few times, averting her eyes, pretending she hadn't noticed.

Now, she just raises an eyebrow in question, ignores the way her body shakes under his eyes.

Sometimes, when she looks up, he's not staring at her at all. Sometimes, all he seems to see is Katherine.

*

"Do you think they're still after me?" she asks Katherine one night, stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Someone is always after you, Elena," Katherine answers. "As long as you're alive. And even if you're not, some of them will keep on following you."

Elena thinks of Katherine running then, of Klaus hunting her down.

"Is someone still after you?" she asks her.

Katherine doesn't answer.

*

She asks Klaus how it all began, how they began, Elena and Katherine and the girl before her. She doesn't expect an answer.

"Her name was Tatia," Klaus says. "Elijah loved her."

He leaves the room without another word.

"You got a lot of questions these days," Katherine comments, leaning against the wall, watching Klaus walk away.

Elena shrugs.

"You got some answers."

Katherine smiles.

"Do you think she was like you?" she asks Katherine later, curling up on the bed again and watching Katherine as she drinks warmed up blood from a plastic cup.

"What? A vampire? Attractive? Awesome?"

Elena snorts at that, almost tells Katherine that she sounded like Damon for a moment. But she swallows it down.

"A bitch," she offers. 

Katherine laughs. "She's dead, isn't she? So I guess she wasn't."

*

Sometimes, Klaus calls her Katerina. She never asks Katherine if he ever calls her by Elena's name.

*

"What was my mother like?" she asks Katherine. 

Katherine shrugs. Elena throws a book at her, doesn't flinch away when Katherine is suddenly close, presses her against a wall with hard hands and too much strength.

"What was she like?" she repeats, staring at her own face, eyes gone black and teeth turned sharp.

Katherine lets her go. Turns away.

"She was my friend," she says, her voice gone distant, unfamiliar. "As much as she could be."

She laughs then, sharply, and turns back to Elena. "She was family."

Elena swallows at that, breathes against the connection she hardly ever remembers because Katherine has her face but Katherine is evil, was evil, is nothing like her.

But...

"I'm family, too," she says, thinks it for the first time, lets it fill her up, because she isn't alone, not yet, not anymore. "Is that why you saved me?"

Katherine shrugs again. "We're stronger together." She grimaces, snorts at her own answer. "You're the only thing I still have left."

*

It's been months and they're still traveling, leaving hotels and cities behind, running because the monsters are coming for them and one day Klaus and Katherine might lose, might fall, and Elena would be alone. They never say the words, but she knows, and she follows them.

"What are they?" she asks Katherine.

"I don't know," she answers, and it scares Elena in new ways.

"They won't get you," Klaus promises her, and she sees the way Katherine rolls her eyes at him behind Klaus' back.

"He wants you for his hybrids," Katherine tells her later.

Elena nods. "I know."

"And don't ever forget that."

She reaches out for Katherine then, touches her hand, smiles at the way their fingers fit together, like a chain to hang up the moon.

"I won't," she promises.

*

She gets drunk one night, too drunk, and she falls in and out of everything, laughing at Katherine, laughing at Klaus as her carries her to her bed.

"You're really pretty," she tells Katherine, giggling at her own joke, pulling Katherine into the bed. Katherine sighs. And stays.

When Elena wakes up hours later, her head pounding and her mouth foul and dry, Klaus is watching over the both of them.

"You're being creepy," she slurs. He shrugs.

*

Sometimes, they stay at one place for months, living in houses that Katherine and Klaus find, playing neighbors, playing normal. Sometimes, it feels almost real, almost solid, until Katherine storms into the house or Klaus steps through the door with a growl on his lips.

"They're coming," they always say, and Elena nods and packs her things together.

They're coming, and the three of them are on the road again, wheels on asphalt, the horizon the only steady thing left.

*

She hasn't called Jeremy in weeks. 

*

"She only stays with you because you're her best bet for survival," she tells Klaus when she sees him watching Katherine. "Because if those things want me, they might want her, too."

He smiles. "Yeah. She's always been smart like that."

*

Some days, her life feels like home. But most of them, she's too tired to live.

She's getting used to that.

*

She wears Katherine's clothes sometimes when they go out. Showing more skin, flashing a smile that's alien on her face even though she has seen it so many times on Katherine's.

Katherine only grins when she sees her, tells the guy she's flirting with that her name is Elena, calls Elena Katherine in turn.

They're twins, she tells him, and he laughs as if it was obvious. It is, of course, even though it's not true. He wants to know who was born first, and Elena laughs at the question.

"Me," Katherine answers. "Isn't that obvious?"

She pulls him away then, pulls him into the bathroom, and Elena wonders if it makes a difference that Katherine is biting him while she's wearing Elena's name.

*

She gets drunk again and kisses Katherine.

"I wondered how that feels like," she says. "Kissing me, that's it."

Katherine blinks, laughs. "You're a narcissist."

Elena shrugs. "And you're a vampire."

*

"I miss being the girl I used to be," she says into the darkness of the night. She hears Katherine stir in the other bed, sees the shape of her body moving.

"Do you even remember her?" Katherine asks.

Elena shrugs, shakes her head. Says, "That is the worst part," and remembers a car spinning out of control, remembers water and death.

"Do you still remember Katarina?" she asks.

"Yes," Katherine answers, pauses. "That is the worst part."

*

The monsters get too close, once, and the three of them are too slow. Elena sees them from the corner of her eye, and she stops running and turns. Watches as the shadows and shades come closer, watches until Klaus is there and pulls her along.

When they're in the car, Katherine is stepping on the pedal, the car starting with a jerk, speeding up, racing past children on bikes. Elena sees them staring after them.

Katherine is screaming at her. Elena doesn't listen.

Later, when the town they lived in fell away behind them, Katherine stomps on the brakes. The sudden stop pulls at Elena, the safety belt cutting into her stomach. She doesn't mind.

Katherine is out of the car in seconds and Elena watches her as she paces up and down in the dirt at the side of the street.

Klaus stays silent.

*

They are at a hotel. They're still alive.

Katherine hasn't spoken to her, not since she freaked out in the car, and Elena waits for her to say something. But Katherine doesn't, staring out of the window, keeping watch. Elena wonders if Katherine would move a muscle if Elena touched her.

She thinks so. But she doesn't try.

"Hey," she says instead, stepping closer. "Katherine?"

"Have you gone made?" Klaus' voice suddenly behind her, sharp and loud, and Elena turns to look at him. He is a towering shadow above her, he's centuries and hate and rage, and she remembers being afraid of him.

She never heard him shout before, not like that, and it makes her laugh, suddenly, makes her shudder. It makes him sound so very alive. At least one of them is.

"Do you want to die?"

She shrugs. Thinks about it.

"I don't want to live." She pauses. "Not like this."

*

They're talking about her. Elena ignores it.

*

Klaus kisses her, his mouth gentle against her lips, and for a few seconds she melts against him. When he pulls away from her, he's smiling.

He looks sad.

"I wanted to know the difference," he tells her. She lets him walk away.

Later, she goes out with Katherine, wearing Katherine's jeans and a top she bought herself before her parents died. It still fits her and she suddenly thinks of aging, thinks of being old and Katherine still looking like this. She pushes the thought away.

Katherine doesn't flirt that night, doesn't pull a guy to the restrooms. She stays close to Elena the whole time, stays close and pulls her closer still, the two of them connected by more than the touch of her hand.

Elena doesn't mind.

*

"Your name isn't Elena. It's Karen. You have no brother. You left your parents' home years ago and haven't spoken to them since. You don't want to. You never met a vampire. You're happy."

The words sink into her and Elena falls away.

*

She wakes in a hospital.

She doesn't remember her name. When they tell her, it doesn't sound familiar at all; it sounds like a stranger she never met.

"That's normal," they say, and smile.

Her life comes back to her in flashes, the arguments with her parents, leaving home. Getting an apartment, a job. Being happy.

Without family.

Without friends.

It's like a dress that's her size but doesn't fit; like a painting by Dali, familiar things gone all wrong.

She returns to it. Gets a new job because she lost the old one shortly before her accident. Tries to make friends this time around, smiles at strangers, goes on dates. Dreams of darkness and sharp smiles, wakes up lonely and sad.

There is something missing. She doesn't know if she wants it back.

*

Somebody is watching her.

She can feel it, eyes on her back, always and everywhere. Sometimes she sees something, too fast to make it out. Sometimes, she sees reflections of her face where there shouldn't be any.

She's scared.

She goes back to the hospital, tells them she's seeing things. Asks if her accident might be to blame. There are examinations that find nothing, cheery smiles and promises of change.

"You're still stressed because of what happened," they say. "That's all."

She nods. She still can't remember what happened to her. Sometimes she catches herself not reacting to her own name.

*

She almost gets mugged a few weeks after she woke up. Almost. Because when the guy points a gun at her, the world falls apart and he goes down with a scream.

She sees something.

It's gone seconds later.

The man is on the ground, groaning, his gun vanished. She thinks of calling the police but doesn't. There is nothing she could tell them, no way she could explain that something is protecting her.

She walks away from the scene, walks home. Knows she isn't alone; knows, again, that someone is watching her.

'No,' she thinks. 'Somebody is watching _over_ me.'

*

She likes her job. It's easy enough, serving coffee with a smile. The people coming into the place are pleasant, they never get loud when things take longer, they tip her well enough.

Her co-workers are nice, joking with her, inviting her to parties. She goes, sometimes, and it's normal and good and she can't think of ways to make it better.

She likes it. That's all there is.

*

She falls in love. She falls out of it, too.

*

Months have passed since the accident. She still can't remember it. She remembers what came before and she's grateful for that. She could have lost it, too, after all, she could have been without a past.

Sometimes, her memories feel off, feel strange and brittle, and she thinks that this it what happened to the moment of the accident. The memory turned fragile and broke away, left her with nothing to hold onto.

So she tells herself the story of her past at night, repeats her name until it's just letters following each other.

"That's who I am," she says in the darkness and thinks she's lying.

*

In her dreams, she follows herself into caves, follows herself into buildings and cars. She tells her therapist about it, listens to his answer. Thinks it's bullshit but doesn't say it out loud.

She kisses herself in her dreams. She doesn't tell anyone about it.

*

The news is full of it, a building destroyed, walls collapsed, and she listens to it at work.

"Witnesses said there was a battle going on in the building," the anchor tells the audience, a slight smirk on his face. "They told the police stories of two people moving inhumanely fast and fighting with shadows. Considering that the area is known for being the home of drug addicts, the stories aren't surprising."

At her side, one of her co-workers laughs. "Sounds like some computer game to me."

She smiles at him, shrugs. "I guess."

When she's home, she can't stop reading articles about it, stares at the ruins of the building.

She's scared and doesn't know why.

*

Life changes.

She got used to the way something always seemed to follow her, got used to the thrill and security of it.

Now the feeling is gone some days, replaced by a new freedom. She should be happy about it; she knows all the ways she should feel about it all. Instead, she feels lonely.

She starts looking for them.

*

She finds them three years later.

She walks into a warehouse close to her home, walks into it because that's where the shadows live, and reality becomes solid with every step she takes.

She thinks of a boy named Stefan, suddenly, and she grieves for him in a way that's new and familiar. She sees another face, another man, thinks, 'Damon', and feels her heart break again. She thinks of a life stolen, feels angry, feels loved.

She keeps on walking.

Klaus smirks when he sees her. Katherine raises an eyebrow.

"Tried normal," Elena tells them. "Didn't work."


End file.
